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Given a place to live, Finland’s homeless were better able to deal with problems

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Re: Given a place to live, Finland’s homeless were better able to deal with problems

#131

Post by zztop44 »

chii wrote: post #117
deanc wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a nuanced issue and I agree with what you wrote. I live in Finland. Some additional thoughts: - The scale of social problems in the US is on a whole other level. More people requires bigger solutions. - The state vs government system in the US means it's every state for themselves when solving social issues. This is seen in states actively shipping homeless people to warmer climate states in order to make the…

> also cold in many places in the US ... so people die all the time there too. The cold climate locations in the US does not have homeless during the winter, because they move away to warmer climates. There's no warmer climate to be in for Finland.

Helsinki winter isn’t much colder than DC or New York, both of which have large year-round homeless populations.

Re: Given a place to live, Finland’s homeless were better able to deal with problems

#132

Post by exDM69 »

draugadrotten wrote: post #109
bjarneh wrote: post #57

> And that led to an insight: people tend to function better when they’re not living on the street or under a bridge. Who would have guessed? Reminds me of the old Fran Lebowitz bit about homelessness, where she says they insist on calling it homelessness, since that makes it sound unsolvable. You really can't buy people a home . If they called it houselessness it would be too easily solvable.

> If they called it houselessness it would be too easily solvable. Only if one believes that the lack of a home or a house is the root cause of the individuals problem. A drug addict provided with a house as a home will turn that house into a cesspit in very short time. The drug addict does not clean, does not take out the trash, does not repair. The drug addict will invite other drug addicts to the house, essentiall…

> Only if one believes that the lack of a home or a house is the root cause of the individuals problem.

Homelessness may not be the root cause, but it effectively prevents one from having a normal life.

One is unable to help oneself if they spend all of their time, money and effort staying warm, fed and safe.

> A drug addict provided with a house as a home will turn that house into a cesspit in very short time. The drug addict does not clean, does not take out the trash, does not repair. The drug addict will invite other drug addicts to the house, essentially turning it into what is called a drug house. The house can no longer be lived in, and it stops being a home.

If you do this you get evicted from normal housing.

Which is why the supported "housing first" initiative apartment blocks come with rules, social workers, etc. Typically they tolerate substance abuse but have restrictions on number of visitors, visiting hours, etc.

> Helping SF drug addicts is a noble cause and should be done - but not by giving them a free house. They need help with their drug addiction first and foremost. Having somewhere to shelter while they get that help is a necessary part of the solution but it is the solution.

It's is extremely difficult to try to get out of substance abuse or mental illness issues when living rough.

This is exactly why the paradigm of giving housing first exists. Previous attempts at helping the homeless with substance abuse and mental health were fruitless. All the money and effort put into that had very poor results. Give the keys to a normal apartment to an addict and they'll be doing drugs instead of paying rent and back on the streets in a few months.

Housing first, addressing problems second was found to be much more effective. This was researched extensively. About 80% of people given supported housing get out of homelessness [0]. That's a massive difference to earlier "shelter only" model of social support for the homeless.

[0] https://www.hdl.fi/blog/asunto-ensin-tavoitteena-pysyva-asum...

Re: Given a place to live, Finland’s homeless were better able to deal with problems

#133

Post by jaclaz »

OT, but not much, a very nice movie, a bit strange but interesting is The Man Without a Past by Aki Kaurismäki, that "touches" a similar theme:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Man_Without_a_Past

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aki_Kaurism%C3%A4ki

Re: Given a place to live, Finland’s homeless were better able to deal with problems

#134

Post by SanderNL »

riffraff wrote: post #29
SanderNL wrote: post #9

I don’t know about Finland, but Dutch people already can’t find places to live. If you are unlucky financially and need government housing you will wait years if not a decade or more for something. If you can rent something you will pay €1000 for a modest place in a bad neighborhood. Given that a fair chunk of the population earns in the €1500-2000 range, that’s not a good prospect. Housing is not just something you…

Worth noting: population density for all of the Netherlands 532/km^2. The highest density in Finland, in the Greater Helsinki area, is 421.8/km^2. Finland does have a lot more space. Still, Paris has a density of 690/km^2 and is not a hellscape, so the choice of not having more housing (and pushing down RE prices) is political, not a deity-given rule.

I know these numbers and they are brought up often, but nearly 100% of our terrain is fundamentally habitable - but some of it is purposefully claimed for nature - and filled to the brim with essential infrastructure. I don't think you can just take the vast, empty and rough mountainous and wild terrains of Finland and declare them realistically habitable.

Re: Given a place to live, Finland’s homeless were better able to deal with problems

#135

Post by mantas »

negidius wrote: post #67
bilqis wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This won’t happen under current state of capitalistic systems. No-one will fund this for sole purpose of public good.

There are a plenty of people who want to build more housing, and they would make a lot of money doing that if it wasn't illegal. The problem is not capitalism, it's statism.

It's an infinite loop. Build more housing to suck in more jobs and people. Then you need even more housing since people from now-depleted surroundings come in. Rinse and repeat.

It's not capitalism or statism. It's lack of safeguards to prevent concentrating too many people and economy into too tiny pieces of land.

Re: Given a place to live, Finland’s homeless were better able to deal with problems

#136

Post by silisili »

tfourb wrote: post #125
silisili wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is so dismissive. We have to admit and analyze the reasons for homelessness before we attempt a solution. Sometimes, people who do everything right end up homeless due to illness, rising rents, death in the family, or any multitude of reasons. If we gave these people free housing and resources, they'd likely bounce back and be fine. If we mix in folks who are drugged out beyond belief, who are violent, who have…

But who is gaining anything if the "drugged out, violent, no desire to improve" folks are living on the street instead of some government provided (or paid for) permanent housing? The point of the Finnish project and similar approaches in other countries is to first get people off the street, because it is much easier and cheaper to resolve any other issues within the context of a permanent home. Yes, some of the ben…

Perhaps we are converging on a compromise. I'm completely OK housing them, as long as they are housed physically separately from the others.

Re: Given a place to live, Finland’s homeless were better able to deal with problems

#137

Post by m000 »

ekianjo wrote: post #128
tfourb wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not at all the same in Germany, but even as a property owner, I see some justification for effectively legalizing squatting in unused buildings. It would create some incentive for property owners to invest and rent out buildings, or otherwise sell them cheaply. Ideally this would be formalized and matched with a proper framework, i.e. municipalities can easily buy unused properties at a nominal cost, property owners…

> It would create some incentive for property owners to invest and rent out buildings, or otherwise sell them cheaply. Property is property, you should be free to do what you want with them. Otherwise it's not property. It's like saying "you have a car, you need to use it everyday, otherwise we can justify people borrowing your car when they need one". Also, rent controls, aren't they a thing in some parts of Germany…

Property and property rights are defined by the society. It's not a natural law or something. If society agrees that property works in a "use it or lose it" manner, so it is.

Re: Given a place to live, Finland’s homeless were better able to deal with problems

#138

Post by eesmith »

exDM69 wrote: post #76
eesmith wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. The baseline weather hasn't significantly changed in the last 20 years. Before this policy there were more homeless people. One of the links is to https://www.themandarin.com.au/205500-finland-ends-homelessn... . > In 2008, you could see tent villages and huts standing between trees in the parks of Helsinki. Homeless people had built makeshift homes in the middle of Finland’s capital city. They were exposed to ha…

This is not very accurate depiction. The tent camps that were common 15 years ago were victims of human trafficking by southern European gangs. They were predominantly from a certain ethnic group from two southern European countries. They are moved to other countries when the weather gets cold and come back in the spring. Street homelessness was not common before the housing first doctrine, there were shelters. Housi…

bboygravity's proposition was that Finland doesn't have long-term homeless people because the harsh winter kills them off.

This is clearly not so, because the source I gave shows long-term homeless people in Finland, who survived winter using "tent villages and huts".

That over a quarter of them were immigrants [1] does not change the fact that they existed, or that almost 75% were not immigrants [2].

> Street homelessness was not common before the housing first doctrine, there were shelters.

Yes, it's a good point that there are many types of homelessness, and living rough/on the streets is only one. But I think that distinction is directed more towards bboygravity?

The link I gave earlier, to https://www.themandarin.com.au/205500-finland-ends-homelessn... , mentions issues going back to the 1980s, which is well before Finland joined the EU:

] Since the 1980s, Finnish governments had been trying to reduce homelessness with the building of short-term shelters. However, long-term homeless people were still left out. There were too few emergency shelters and many affected people did not manage to get out of homelessness: they couldn’t find jobs without a housing address. And without any job, they couldn’t find a flat. It was a vicious circle. Furthermore, they had problems applying for social benefits. All in all, homeless people found themselves trapped.

An emergency shelter like you mention is not a housing address needed for finding a job, thus making it harder to get out of homelessness.

[1] "In 2013 there were almost 2 000 homeless immigrants in Finland. In 2013 the group was more than 25 percent of the total homelessness population." - https://helda.helsinki.fi/bitstream/handle/10138/153258/YMra...

[2] "The shortage of small rental dwellings and very high rents in the metropolitan area, especially in Helsinki, create and sustain youth homelessness.223 Two kinds of groups can be found within youth homelessness: young people who are homeless due to their low level of income and overpriced rental housing, and young people who, in addition to housing, need support services.", same source

Re: Given a place to live, Finland’s homeless were better able to deal with problems

#139

Post by redeeman »

sremani wrote: post #112
deanc wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a nuanced issue and I agree with what you wrote. I live in Finland. Some additional thoughts: - The scale of social problems in the US is on a whole other level. More people requires bigger solutions. - The state vs government system in the US means it's every state for themselves when solving social issues. This is seen in states actively shipping homeless people to warmer climate states in order to make the…

>> The scale of social problems in the US is on a whole other level. True. Just for some comparison, if Finland was a metropolitan in US, it would be ranked 10th. Above Phoenix metro and Below Atlanta Metro. I understand the good intentions of people trying to show case 'Scandinavian countries' as a model. They miss many things including Scale.

yes, so economies of scale

Re: Given a place to live, Finland’s homeless were better able to deal with problems

#140

Post by lozenge »

jillesvangurp wrote: post #19

I lived in Finland for a while. Being homeless in that country is pretty hard core in the winter. Which is a reason that sheltering people there is not a nice to have; you either shelter them or you collect their dead bodies in the morning. It's that simple. Places like Helsinki never had a large community of homeless people to begin with (natural selection). But it has plenty of social issues of course. Alcoholism i…

I think you're confusing homeless with rough sleeping. Rough sleeping is sleeping outside, while homeless can include couch surfing (staying with friends for a few days at a time) or sleeping in shelters. Shelters provide beds but no privacy/no security from other residents and no space to build up possessions.

In the article, Toronto provides shelters and Finland provides homes.

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